After approximately three months of experience, we have come with the Ninja Air Fryer MAX AF160UK review to describe this indispensable companion in our kitchen. The Ninja MAX is one of the five air fryers the company currently offers and based on reviews, certainly one of the best air fryers currently on the market.
The Ninja MAX AF160UK is an unexpectedly good small kitchen appliance for fast and healthy food to every household.
- Ninja Air Fryer MAX functions
- Ninja Air Fryer MAX: Cookbook included
- Does food in Air Fryer require oil?
- Air Fryer Snacks DIY
- Is the Ninja Air Fryer’s fan noisy?
- Ninja Air Fryer MAX: Painless Cleaning
- Where to buy the Ninja Air Fryer MAX AF160UK?
- Verdict: Is the Ninja Air Fryer MAX AF160UK worth it and should I buy it?
Initially, I was against my wife buying yet another kitchen appliance for our rather small kitchen, arguing that it will do the same job as our standard electrical oven. Oh boy, how wrong I was. The Airfryer is now probably the second most used device in our kitchen right after the coffee maker.
I was genuinely surprised with the quality of the product as well as with the final result. Cooking crispy peri-peri chicken wings with potato wedges, grilled vegetable, chips, steaks, fish, toasts, sausages, burgers and even baking cakes has now gotten so much easier and most importantly, much healthier too.
Also with the dehydrate mode, we can now make ourselves homemade fruit snacks for cheap, instead of buying expensive 30g dried fruit sachets at our local convenience store.
The Airfryer comes in hand when you’d like to make your meal quicker and healthier, especially if you place the food on the crisper plate allowing the food to drip all of its excessive fat underneath, instead of having your meal soaked in oil like in your oven or on your pan.
The size of the Ninja MAX is 25 x 32 cm, with 36cm height and weight over 5kg, which is not really small and compact and it will surely take some space in your kitchen. Although its modern design is not ugly and will fit well within many kitchen styles.
Ninja Air Fryer MAX functions
The Ninja Air Fryer MAX has a control panel with multiple water-proof buttons from the front. It offers a variety of cooking modes such as Max Crisp, Air Fry, Air Roast, Bake, Reheat or Dehydrate. Upon selecting one of the options, a small, simple display above lits up giving us the option to adjust the temperature and set the timer.
Selecting the frying modes or choosing time and temperature is instant and completely without any lags or delays.
This is very convenient as every meal you cook is slightly different in its type, size, fat proportion or portions. You may, for example, need less time to air fry two chicken legs than two chicken wings.
Ninja Air Fryer MAX 5.2L AF160UK 
Ninja Air Fryer MAX 5.2L AF160UK – basket with a large banana to demonstrate its size 
Ninja Air Fryer MAX 5.2L AF160UK 
Ninja Air Fryer MAX 5.2L AF160UK
You can set the temperature in the range between 40°C in Dehydrate mode to 240°C in Max Crispy mode. Every mode has its pre-selected temperature and time which you can simply adjust with just a single click.
Ninja Air Fryer MAX: Cookbook included
Every Ninja Ari Fryer comes with a handy guide and a cookbook, giving you estimating times and temperatures for different types of meals. The well-written guidelines with certainly help you during your first air frying experience, although you will most likely adjust the settings to your own preferences and taste later on.
Some Air fryers, for instance from the Tefal brand, feature a glass lid so you can see the air fryer in action. It was might first concern here, that food might come out burnt too often as we won’t be able to see it. However, after reading the guide, which specifically says to turn the food around during the process, everything always comes out the way we like it and we have never managed to burn the food. We usually flip the meal over once, somewhere halfway through and check occasionally.
Instant stop and start
The Air Fryer pauses instantly when you remove the bowl and starts right up when inserting it back in. It wastes absolutely no time and friers the food at blazing speeds opposing to a classic oven.
Basket capacity
The 5.2L basket has enough capacity to fit around 5-6 chicken wings or about 2 portions of potato wedges inside without them being too stuffed and overlaying each other. The bowl is quite high as well and would certainly fit much more food inside, however you might have to flip around the food more often to fry it evenly, thus might need more time too.
Our favourite peri-peri chicken wings take usually only around 18-20 minutes at 180°C, or 10 minutes at 240°C if we want them a bit darker and crispier.
Does food in Air Fryer require oil?
Most of the food doesn’t require any oil at all, however, there are meals (potato wedges, potato crisps, grilled asparagus and some other vegetables..) where a tablespoon of virgin olive oil will keep it from being too dried up as well as give it a better taste. You can use any oil you wish, but to keep your food healthier, it might be better to stick to extra virgin olive oil, sesame oil, avocado oil or peanut oil using an Oil spray dispenser – see it at Amazon.
Air Fryer Snacks DIY
As mentioned before, the air fryer is also great for making light, healthy snacks, such as potato crisps with a touch of olive oil, a pinch of salt and marjoram or thyme. Dried fruit snacks can also be prepared in a matter of minutes.
Even though the included guidebook states the process takes somewhere around 7-8 hours at low temp, you may reach similar results in just half an hour to an hour (depending on the fruit) with a slightly higher temperature than recommended.
Not only launches or snacks, but the Ninja AirFryer is also a great assistant while cooking full English breakfasts or making grilled cheese toasts.
The possibilities are just endless.
Is the Ninja Air Fryer’s fan noisy?
It is true that the Air Fryer might be a bit noisy to some, although I wouldn’t say the noise would reach any disturbing levels. It may be just slightly louder than your microwave.
It is because the fan in the 1750W Ninja AF160UK produces really good, fast airflow which obviously reflects in its fast cooking speeds together with a quick heat-up of its spiral heating element.
Ninja Air Fryer MAX: Painless Cleaning
After the previous experience of how hard is it sometimes to keep some small appliances clean, the cornerstone of decision while buying the Ninja AF160UK was the removable and easy washable bowl. The bowl slides out easily and only has a simple removable grill rack/crisper plate inside.
The inner surface is covered with ceramic coating and is smooth from both inside and outside with no sharp corners where burnt food would pile up.
The dishwasher-safe bowl is also very easy to clean by hand with a little bit of pre-soaking after which the baked-on food comes right off.
The only place which might be a bit tricky (not impossible) to clean is in the space around the spiral heating element above the basket which catches greasy splashes from the food underneath.
Where to buy the Ninja Air Fryer MAX AF160UK?
🇬🇧 You can buy the Ninja® Air Fryer MAX online at most of the popular UK stores selling electronics and kitchen appliances, such as Amazon, Argos, Currys, John Lewis, AO, Very, QVC UK, appliancesdirect.co.uk or at the official shop Ninja Kitchen for a standard price of £149.99.
There is also a smaller version available for £119.99 with a 3.8L basket, which to our opinion might not be worth it being only £30 cheaper.
🇺🇸 For our friends in the US, this model is called Ninja® Air Fryer Max XL (AF161), costing 119,99 US$ (before tax). You can also buy the Ninja Max XL AF161 in most of the major stores such as Best Buy, QVC, Kohl’s, Walmart, Macy’s, instacart, JCPenney or at the official shop Ninja Kitchen.
Verdict: Is the Ninja Air Fryer MAX AF160UK worth it and should I buy it?
If you consider buying the Ninja Air Fryer Max for yourself or as a gift to someone, we would greatly recommend this product as it will most likely become one of the kitchen appliances you will use on an almost daily basis.
From our experience, the air fryer stays on top of the kitchen worktop at all times now and since we bought it around 3 months ago, we have used our convection oven just about once.
The food comes out of the air fryer much faster, it’s definitely healthier, cleaning of the non-stick tray is as easy as it gets and passively it also saves your money in the long run as it uses less power over a shorter period of time compared to the standard oven.
